East Chicago, Ind. Police Really Lame

EAST CHICAGO, Ind. — City officials have turned off a streetlight that drew more than 250 people to see a shadow that some say resembles the image of Jesus Christ.

East Chicago Police Chief Angelo Machuca called an emergency meeting Sunday to recommend the light be turned off in the interest of public safety after nearby residents complained about blocked cars and visitors congregating until 5 a.m.

Several arrests were made Friday night after a large fight broke out in the area.

“The city respects everyone’s religious beliefs, but it’s getting to the point now where it’s almost too dangerous” to leave the light on, said Damian Rico, the city’s public relations director.

People have flocked to the site since Wednesday, when a woman first claimed to see the image on the side of a tree. The image is only visible at night when the streetlight near the tree is illuminated.

So lemme see if I get this right… over the last 5 days a whopping 250 people have shown up to see something and the crowd is just so overwhelming the local PD can’t control the sea of humanity? — That’s roughly the size of the crowd a small movie theater or a small restaurant — but spread out over almost a week. Just exactly how hard is it?

Lemme tell ya, if my home town police department couldn’t handle this sort of task, I’d seriously wonder what they were qualified to do.

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4 Comments

JohnJuly 11, 2005

I’m sure the visitors were there looking for a fight.

testJuly 11, 2005

What I think is lame is all these new stories and none have a picture of the jesus image! I mean this is internet, these kind of stories need a picture. In fact the whole crowd problem could probably have been avoided if they simply posted a picture somewhere.

mantisJuly 11, 2005

Nice of you, Paul, to leave out the last two grafs of that story, which say:

Machuca said his department doesn’t have the manpower to maintain regular patrols and control the crowd.

“The light will remain off until we can get some kind of solution,” he said.

“It came to the point where I had to ask for help from the (Lake County) Sheriff’s Department. They sent six officers yesterday,” Machuca said Sunday.

So the police in this town of 32k, which incidentally is one of the top 50 cities in terms of violent crime, might have more important things to do than patrol a tree in the park all night. So, I guess the answer to this:

So lemme see if I get this right…

is no, you don’t get it right, Paul.

PaulJuly 11, 2005

So let’s review Mantis…

I make the point they are lame because they can not control a crowd of 250 people.

You are so freaking excited about getting into a fight with me that you spend 20 minutes googling to prove that they are also in the top 50 cities in terms of violent crime. Well done young Mantis, well done…

So in your quest to get into a pissing contest with me, you went ahead and made my point for me. I ended my commentary with “if my home town police department couldn’t handle this sort of task, I’d seriously wonder what they were qualified to do.”

You answered the question by telling me they aren’t qualified to do much. So I was right — they are incompetent. And you got so freaking excited about starting a fight with me that you overlooked the fact that you proved them to be incompetent far better than I did!